Coming soon: Moynihan’s Moment, with a Minnesota twist

Suzanne Garment’s excellent column “With words we govern men” alerted me to Gil Troy’s new book, Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism As Racism. Moynihan’s moment was his moment of greatness at the United Nations opposing the adoption of the Soviet-inspired “Zionism is racism” resolution by the General Assembly in 1975. The damage lives on, but the resolution was undone at the insistence of the United States in the administration of the first President Bush, thanks to the efforts of of John Bolton and others.

The story is one that has long been of interest to me for a number of reasons. I drew on Moynihan’s memoir of the events, written with Suzanne Garment, to write a 2006 column for the Weekly Standard about the New York Times’s opposition to the service of Moynihan and Bolton at the UN. The Standard ran the column under the heading “Déjà vu, all over again.” I think it quotes Moynihan to good effect on matters of continuing relevance.

I invited Professor Troy to write something for us taking up the story. He has obliged with a column that adds a local Minnesota angle to the story. I will post the column first thing tomorrow morning.

Editing it in a draft earlier today, I accidentally published it for a few seconds with html code and URLs to items with which I had intended to introduce the column, including the video below. I wanted to take the occasion to explain here what happened and to post the video of “Moynihan’s moment” of greatness, for those who may not have seen it before, for those who can use a quick refresher, and for those who (like me) want to keep the memory alive.